According to The Australian newspaper

According to The Australian newspaper

According to The Australian newspaper, the “T-box” will see Telstra offer content through its Bigpond internet brand to be viewed on TVs. Telstra is also apparently hawking the content on offer to PVR manufacturers, offering to make it available to their user base.

Australia’s incumbent telco Telstra is apparently gearing up to launch its set-top box-based IPTV service before the end of the year.

Despite Telstra’s 50% ownership of dominant pay-TV platform Foxtel, the IPTV service will not involve that operator – which Telstra may end up having to divest anyway. The uncertain future of Telstra’s Foxtel stake is one of the reasons cited for keeping the IPTV service a Telstra/Bigpond play, unlike Telstra’s mobile TV service, which is branded Foxtel by Telstra.

But Telstra is also working on delivering content via broadband to Foxtel users via a next-generation broadband-connected version of the iQ PVR set-top. Currently, a selection of content is delivered to users’ hard drives via satellite for on-demand watching.

Bigpond already offers a large amount of content to its internet access subscribers via its website, including “channels” Bigpond Footy TV, Bigpond News TV, Bigpond League TV, Bigpond Racing TV and Bigpond Music TV. Subscribers can also watch news and music on demand. It is this content Telstra now hopes to bring to TV sets.